"No one's ever written me a poem before" August, '05

"They're yours to with as you wish"

A couple autumns back you gave me a folder filled with letters, notes, cards and such, things that I had passed along to you. I don't know when you started compiling them, but that folder was heavy, a real time capsule of our time together.

What started it all I have sitting before me right now. A cropped white piece of paper, gingerly handled by you many times over. It was more than just a printed email, it was a piece of your personal emotional history, something that you said was harder than anything you knew to give up. That it still exists says much about us, about our commitment to the documentation of our times.

I remember the day you scrubbed your mailbox, wiped clean that June to keep you from getting into any more trouble at home. And I also remember that infamous day in September when I cleaned mine out, scrubbed hard out of indignation, anger and sheer stupidity. By fall of '06 all of our electronic mail was gone, all we had left was what we had printed out and set aside. Out of anger I had asked you to give me back all of my letters. It was a sad thing for you to do but you relinquished them. For better or worse I am now the holder of that satchel of faded dreams.

That neither one of us torched that folder is a miracle. It's a testament to our tenacity, to our beat sense of commitment, to our tenderheartedness and possibly to my foolishness. Those letters and notes and such have the half life of spent nuclear rods, still pack a punch, still have the ability to get us both in serious hot water but I know that I have to keep them all the same.

But I must say that there is one piece in particular that I cherish more than all the others, cherish having back in my hands again. Not because I wrote it, but because I know what it meant to you.

That piece has been made even more special because I know it was there in your hands, all those folds and creases and bent corners are careworn lines and crinkles that you made. The wrinkles in that paper tell me that it was handled often for a time, tells me that it was purposely culled out of all the letters we wrote to each other that summer. It was printed and cut and folded and stuck away in your purse to be pulled out and read in private. It was something that made an impression on you, an impression much larger than I had ever expected it to.

It was just meant to be a small gesture of my affection for you, that poem. I wrote it and sent it along to you on a Friday night. I woke up the next day thinking it was going to be a normal weekend. I was doing typical Saturday morning housework when checked my in-box for news and found that you left me a quick note, asking me to meet you at IKEA that afternoon. You were dropping your sister off at the airport and would be right up the highway. Could I make it? I did and that day changed our lives.

But more than that it was your response to that poem that I still cherish to this day. I no longer have that note but there was one line that I'll never forget. It was a simple thing, that poem. It could have been a fatal flaw, could have ended everything, but instead you told me that no one had ever written you a poem before. You called me your own personal Cyrano. To read that was heartbreaking.

After that I made it a point to write a poem for you once a month, every month, on the 27th. And like with that first one, each month you faithfully printed it out, folded it in half and stuck it into that plastic folder, the one you got at WALE, the one that you had secretly squirreled away in your closet. In the end you gave that folder of words back to me, not only to please me but to give you and yours a fighting chance.

But, back on that day, the 27th of August, 2005, your heart was filled with light. No one had thrilled you before in the way that you had been thrilled that day. You were special then, and face it, Melissa, in my eyes, you still are.

You would have thought that the moment
that defining moment

between us
would have arrived
more stealthy
silent

would have posed as being something more
common place
you were but a name on a piece of paper
an appointment to keep

someone to meet
who was to know?
but when you walked into that room
it was as if a whole circus train unloaded

right then and there

klaxons sounded tubas blared
calliopes whistled
acrobats clowns and lions did what they do
the whole world just opened up and fed-exed in an immense amount
of lightness
and sweetness
and clarity
into that room
and it's never stopped you see
every time you walk into a room time
stops
and then starts again
but in that moment when the world comes to a halt a
thousand papparazzi flash their bulbs and capture
that moment
a moment then becomes part of the chapbook of memories
of you that I carry with me
an album filled with memories
of blue dresses
of a particular generosity of spirit
of smiles
of a very wonderful
very real
very nice person
I sometimes wonder how it was that I got to be so lucky
to be in that room the day you walked in"

Your WHMB